March 2016

March 30, 2016

This morning the air is calm, not even a breath of wind; the sea is tranquil and a layer of low cloud drifts quietly across the Gulf from the West. Out past the clouds a band of blue sky promises some sunshine later in the day... now that the easter holidays are over the beach has returned to it's quiet autumn persona... just a few of the regular dog walkers like us and the winter swimmers on their weekly swim from the jetty to Seacliff. While the air is now cooler than the during the heat of summer; autumn has the beginnings of the undisturbed solitude that walking on a beach on cool windy winter's day when few people are around attracts.

March 28, 2016

Harvard does a wheels-up landing at the Wanaka Air Show. Doesn't look too badly damaged. I looked up my logbook but I never flew that tail number of Harvard... I flew 1056 and 1058 but never the one in the middle. Great aircraft and awesome to learn to fly on... never forget doing aero's over the Canterbury Plains on a cold morning with the tips of the propeller blades cracking the sound barrier and making that unmistakeable resonance. The famers south of Christchurch must have gone deaf after years of cadet pilots doing aerobatics over their properties... I love spending Govt. money... LOL

March 26, 2016

Pheasant Coucal - photographed on the road side at the Broome industrial area.

These large council species are surprisingly common, at least in northern Australia, where they can be seen from time to time fossicking about on the ground quite close to human habitation. They also like to sit high on a branch or tree observing the world around. The feather patterning on their wings and tail is intricate and from a distance their heads and underparts are very dark... almost black. The other way to find them is hearing their distinctive deep repetitive call.

Pheasant Coucal showing the extraordinary length of it's tail. Sitting in a Pandanus forest at Darwin Airport -n May 2009

Although it is a cuckoo, it builds it own nest and raises it's young. Coucal's are found throughout the warmer regions of the world.

A very dark headed male at Broome in February 2009.

Councils are definitely on my list of favourite birds. They are regularly seen in the coastal parts of the Pilbara.

March 25, 2016

Rising under Mount Howitt in the Victorian Alps is the picturesque Howqua River. The character of Billy Slim in Nevil Shute's 1952 novel The Far Country was based on Fred Fry, a notable fly fisherman... or was it Fred Fly, a notable fry fisherman... who eked out a quiet existence in the river valley.

The Howqua River at Sheepyard Flat.

This was a favourite haunt of mine during my fire bombing days...

Mount Howitt was named after Alfred William Howitt who in 1861 was sent north into northern South Australia to try to discover the fate of the Burke and Will Debacle otherwise known as the Burke and Will Expedition. Unlike Burke, who reputedly would get lost between the Beechworth Pub and his residence when he was the Police Captain, Howitt was a experienced bushman and explorer. He and his crew on 16 September 1861 found the sole survivor, John King. Hewitt buried Burke and Wills before returning to Melbourne with King. On a follow-up expedition to Cooper Creek in 1862, Howitt recovered the bodies of Burke and Wills.

March 12, 2016

When an apple falls towards the Earth... ever so slightly the Earth falls towards the apple. Gravity is the black-hole in man's understanding of his multiverse. What is gravity? No-one knows the answer to what actually is the force... if that's what it is... that holds the universe together. Imagine if you will, standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon and not knowing what is a river. You may know what the river does but you don't know what it is... that is where gravity stands. A huge chasm cut deep into the the cosmos... cosmos means the universe seen as a well-ordered whole... but it is well ordered... maybe... but by not knowing what gravity is how can we why or how we got here... unless of course you are a Christian.

“Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him. Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.” AA Milne

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.” Hermann Hesse

It doesn't really matter whether we are talking about the Colorado River, The Nile or the Murray... these rivers are like gravity... it doesn't travel but it is just everywhere and affects everything.

March 03, 2016

Mindfulness is on the band wagon on the moment and good it is too; but some of what is promoted... for profit... as mindfulness is actually mindlessness. For example, mindlessness would be colouring in colouring-in books... they can be called adult colouring books but they are still are exercises in mindlessness.

Another fraudulent delusion of the so-called effective living and working guru's is multi-tasking... the human brain is simply unable to concentrate on more than one thing that requires attention to detail or rational thinking. Multi-tasking is an urban myth concocted by people wanting to alleviate their insecurities... and by corporations who believe they can get more out of people to make them more successful, efficient, productive and admirable. It simply doesn't work. Multiple things just get done half-heartedly. Productivity, of course is a buzz-word of the corporate world... otherwise known as "trying to get blood out of a stone." It's amazing how corporate productivity systems always backfire and result in reduced performance and failure... and they never learn... anyway, anyway... moving on...

Lake Tarawera, NZ

Mindfulness on the other hand is about being aware. One of the major problems with human thinking is that we over do it. Mindfulness is about allowing the brain to concentrate on just one thing at a time; not allowing distracting thoughts to side-track us. Mindfulness can be achieved by meditation, art, music, writing, creating; curiosity with seeing, listening, touching, smelling just sitting doing nothing; all things that require awareness. None of these things can be done automatically, they require us to be in-touch with the sensations each of them bring. Mediation, for example, requires us to be very aware of our mental state. It is not about trying to achieve a blank mental state devoid of thoughts, supposedly to bring peace of mind; that is impossible anyway because the brain won't allow it. If we are doing something which has become automatic; such as driving a car where we are operating in a state of mindlessness ... our thoughts can go elsewhere until something unusual or unexpected happens and then we need to concentrate. When that happens our thoughts quickly go-away from what we were thinking about... we become mindful; and stressed if the unusual event is a threat.

Colouring in colouring-in books is mindlessness; it is an automatic process that requires little or no thinking, just filling in between the lines and what is worse is that it is encouraging conforming... especially in children... rather than being enlightening; non-thinking is not mindfulness because very quickly, like when we are driving a car, our thoughts start wandering all over the place and negative thoughts are invariably exactly where they are headed... the worries and pressures of modern living are a regular destination for them. But it is simple to change colouring-in from mindlessness to mindfulness by making it into a creative endeavour. Rather than buying a colouring-in book... so this can save money too... take a blank sheet of paper. Start drawing simple shapes with a pencil or pen. If you can make the shapes look like something... such as leaves of a tree in the garden or on a plant in a pot... so much the better, but it doesn't matter what you try to draw and it doesn't matter if they don't look like anything in particular... keep going until the page is covered in shapes. This has taken concentration... distractions including the negative thoughts have largely evaporated as you focus on the page and the serendipitous result is you have also created an original drawing. You can leave it like that or colour it in. That is the difference between mindfulness and mindlessness. You can go even further by giving it to someone; remember a gift given to someone else is one of the things you keep for ever... when you keep something you never have it. What a result; you have produced an original art work; reduced unwanted negative thoughts, made a gift and entered a state of mindfulness all in one go.

Home made colouring... the above two images are simple art works that anyone can do... just a series of leaf shapes drawn in pen and then coloured with basic water paint techniques. With a bit of practise this is well within the capabilities of anybody...

Mark Twain was one of the most amazing writers and what makes writers like him so good is their ability to write down what we all experience in our day to day lives. He was thinking about our predisposition to catastrophize our negative thoughts into reality; he wrote:

“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

So mindfulness allows us to reduce the invasion of all distracting thoughts, whether they are bothersome or positive, by being aware of the present moment, and when wayward thoughts do occur... and no matter how hard we try they will always intrude to some degree or other... we can put them into a sense of proportion and allow us to move on from them. Mindlessness, such as when doing meaningless repetitive tasks, is a fertile field for our thoughts, especially unhelpful ones that germinate, grow wild and blossom, and bear fruit as an imagined full catastrophe. What as waste.